November 14, 2013 "Information
Clearing House
-The
release of the White House “Government Assessment” on August 30,
providing the purported evidence to support a bombing attack on
Syria, defused a conflict with the intelligence community that
had threatened to become public through the mass resignation of
a significant number of analysts. The intelligence community’s
consensus view on the status of the Syrian chemical-weapons
program was derived from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
completed late last year and hurriedly updated this past summer
to reflect the suspected use of chemical weapons against rebels
and civilians.

The report
maintained that there were some indications that the regime was
using chemicals, while conceding that there was no conclusive
proof. There was considerable dissent from even that
equivocation, including by many analysts who felt that the
evidence for a Syrian government role was subject to
interpretation and possibly even fabricated. Some believed the
complete absence of U.S. satellite intelligence on the extensive
preparations that the government would have needed to make in
order to mix its binary chemical system and deliver it on target
was particularly disturbing. These concerns were reinforced by
subsequent UN reports suggesting that the rebels might have
access to their own chemical weapons. The White House,
meanwhile, considered the somewhat ambiguous conclusion of the
NIE to be unsatisfactory, resulting in considerable pushback
against the senior analysts who had authored the report.

In a
scenario unfortunately reminiscent of the lead up to Iraq, the
National Security Council tasked the various intelligence
agencies to beat the bushes and come up with more corroborative
information. Israel obligingly provided what was reported to be
interceptions of telephone conversations implicating the Syrian
army in the attack, but it was widely believed that the
information might have been fabricated by Tel Aviv, meaning that
bad intelligence was being used to confirm other suspect
information, a phenomenon known to analysts as “circular
reporting.” Other intelligence cited in passing by the White
House on the trajectories and telemetry of rockets that may have
been used in the attack was also somewhat conjectural and
involved weapons that were not, in fact, in the Syrian arsenal,
suggesting that they were actually fired by the rebels. Also,
traces of Sarin were not found in most of the areas being
investigated, nor on one of the two rockets identified. Whether
the victims of the attack suffered symptoms of Sarin was also
disputed, and no autopsies were performed to confirm the
presence of the chemical.

With all
evidence considered, the intelligence community found itself
with numerous skeptics in the ranks, leading to sharp exchanges
with the Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan and
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. A number of
analysts threatened to resign as a group if their strong dissent
was not noted in any report released to the public, forcing both
Brennan and Clapper to back down. This led to the White House
issuing its own assessment, completely divorcing the process
from any direct connection to the intelligence community. The
spectacle of CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind Secretary
of State Colin Powell in the United Nations, providing him with
credibility as Powell told a series of half-truths, would not be
repeated.

Philip
Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the
Council for the National Interest.

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